28/05/2014

Like many 17 year olds, I have finished with my GCSEs. Since
I progressed to A Level before the changes to the education system, I found
myself lucky enough to study To Kill a Mockingbird in GCSE English. I feel
sorry for the new cohort for whom novels such as To Kill a Mockingbird are effectively
blacklisted.

When I first encountered Harper Lee and John Steinbeck I was
aware that they were part of the American canon and, after reading the texts,
it is difficult to divorce the writers from their respective contexts. However,
we should not divorce these books from the English curriculum simply because
Lee and Steinbeck are ‘foreigners’. The mentality behind removing American
literature from our classrooms is frightening. 18th or 19th
century English novels are certainly rich pieces of literature to study, yet the
time in which they were written was a time when the English were beginning to
travel around the globe and vastly enrich their perceptions of the world
(unfortunately, this came at the expense of other nations). To consequently
limit the serious study of literature to only mainland English literature is to
define the parts of the globe that aren’t English as inferior.

‘Sub-English’, not good enough for British children to
study, would be populated by Steinbeck and Lee, Vikram Seth and Arundati Roy
(both recognised by the literary prizes, but not good enough for our new
nationalist, I mean national, curriculum) – authors whose first language isn’t
English, why that would be unthinkable! Discredit ‘Heart of Darkness’ by the
Polish Joseph Conrad and ‘Unbearable Lightness of Being’ by Czech Milan Kundera.
Perhaps the dedicated literature enthusiasts among the GCSE takers will surreptitiously
read these novels in their own time but, under the conditioning from the new
education system, would they consider these novels to be unworthy of serious
analysis because their experience of education has taught them that, unless it’s
English, it’s undesirable? What’s to stop their thoughts from making the link,
whether consciously or not, from categorising the authors and their nationality
as undesirable?

Judging books not by their content but by the country in
which the writers were born ignores that English is a global language and that the
study of literature has only been enriched by understanding and encouraging the
global writing scene. The criterion for assessing whether a book can be studied
in English classrooms should simply be whether the text is in English. Due to
the virtue of translation, this means the choice of books is limitless, which
is exactly as it should be. Instead of burning books and trying to push English
students away from arts subjects, the education system should be encouraging
children to pursue a range of literature, and actively discourage the judgement
of others on the basis of their nationality.

22/05/2014

1. People and weird and confusing and messy and I think I'm endlessly pursuing an understanding of the human condition. Maybe I'll never figure it out? Is that what being a person is? I always come back to the scene in Frances Ha where she nervously laughs and apologises for not being a real person yet.

2. You will still get called an immigrant in Brighton. And bite your tongue not to say 'immigrant or immiGREAT???'

3. Bosses will allow you to be an hour late to work and it will only be your guilt that makes you do better next time. Guilt and the fact that working two and a half hours means your payslip is under 10 pounds for the past two weeks.

4. You will learn all the words to Catalina Fight Song.

5. Life still goes on even when you fail exams. "Different smart" is my favourite term of the moment. I'm a big nerd but distracted and messy and weird and confusing.

21/04/2014

Lately I've been having conversations with my friends about how it's good that the situations we're in right now are temporary, because that's what makes it mean something and oh my I just realised that this whole post could basically paraphrase Gwen Stacey's valedictorian speech from The Amazing Spider-man 2, which I've watched twice this week already, so obviously this is too recycled but you know what I mean about a sense of nihilism to highlight the good parts of... life... I guess.

11/04/2014

I'm overwhelmed by how well this blog is still doing, so thank you from the bottom of my eternally 12 year old heart for validating what may or may not have been a good idea to start. I think this fragmented narrative will be unfinished forever.

Some really crazy weeks have been had this year and I'm still firmly heading upwards on that graph of 'every year is better than the last'. I've woken up in strange places in Brighton, ran to work, vomited at work, stolen tshirts from friends, consumed a tonne of fruit and fibre (note to self: look into getting sponsored by Kellogg's), spent my entire bank account, gone to Paris, applied for a visa to China, turned vegan, turned Grimes-style-vegan, failed at being vegan, and spent more hours on trains than not.

My back constantly aches and I think I need to sleep more. My ankle is still swollen. I've decided not to shave my legs and boycott Veet. Feminist club is going nicely. I went to see Bombay Bicycle Club and it was so fun. The unravelled strands of my pseudo-existential-teenage-crises aren't bothering me anymore.